


Time and Togetherness

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 17:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17687684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: When you've been locked up and drugged, getting out of captivity is just the first part.





	Time and Togetherness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harborshore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/gifts).



Afterwards, Peggy learned that they'd been prisoners of Leviathan for two days. It had seemed much longer in the moment, as they'd given her no way to track the passage of time -- a classic interrogator's trick, she knew, though it was hard to keep that in mind when one was captive and drugged.

She had been separated from Daniel immediately, roughed up a bit, and kept in a stark white room with bright lights to stop her from sleeping. They had injected her with drugs that made her jittery and mentally foggy; she'd bitten her tongue until she tasted blood to stop herself from babbling.

But that was as far as it got before she finally managed to turn the injection needle back on her captors, leaving two Leviathan agents unconscious or dead, and had picked the lock on her cell using the syringe itself plus a hairpin -- and had escaped right into the middle of an SSR rescue in progress.

"Really?" she panted out when she nearly collided with a startled-looking junior agent who appeared to be in the process of trying to break into her cell, after nearly braining him with her shoe. "Better late than never, I suppose. Oh, bollocks, I didn't intend to say that out loud. Bollocks. That either. Have you found Chief Sousa yet?" He had better be well. It was hard to keep her thoughts on track.

"I think Agent Bershaw's got him," the junior agent said, and Peggy only barely managed to stop herself from blurting out something embarrassing and all too revealing in her relief. This euphoria lasted until she saw Daniel in the hallway, draped on Agent Bershaw with his face discolored with bruises and one leg of his trousers hanging loose and empty.

"Daniel," she gasped, stumbling as she tried to reach him. The hallway seemed impossibly long and then too short and then she was tumbling against Daniel, who seemed suddenly the only solid thing in the seesawing world. He was sweaty and filthy and wonderfully, wonderfully real. She kissed him before she could stop herself -- their relationship was probably the worst-kept secret at the SSR by now, anyway -- but he gasped in pain in the middle of it, and she drew back quickly, noticing his split lip.

"Oh Daniel," she murmured. She touched the side of his face gently, just below a swollen, blood-clotted gash where it looked like someone had hit him with a heavy object.

"Jack's worse than I am," he said hoarsely, and her brain stuttered on that. Jack shouldn't have been here; it was just the two of them ... wasn't it? For an instant she wondered if she had lost more than she'd thought through the slippery cracks in her drugged-up brain.

"Jack's here? Why is Jack here?"

"Idiot came looking for us."

"Uh, Chief, you want to get out of here?" Bershaw asked, and Peggy moved to Daniel's other side to wrap his arm around her shoulders, so that he was supported between them. 

But she couldn't stop thinking: he'd said Jack was worse. How much worse was _worse?_

Outside, they were swept apart by the medical team, and she didn't have a chance to see Jack at all until later, when they were all three installed in a room in a secure SSR facility. She knew the protocols well; it didn't have to be explained. No one knew, yet, exactly what had been done to them or how badly it was going to affect them. In all likelihood they'd only been given standard interrogation drugs, but no one knew whether Leviathan had come up with new, even more sophisticated brainwashing techniques since the Fennhoff incident. Two years had faded the memory of Dooley's death, but not the sense of paranoia it had caused. Agents rescued from Leviathan had to be securely quarantined for the first few days to make sure they hadn't come back with any mental triggers or other programming.

On a good day, Peggy might have argued about it, or at least made a case for being interred somewhere that didn't have cinderblock walls and harsh white lights; she had to remind herself from minute to minute that she wasn't still a Leviathan prisoner. Here, at least, she was able to take a bath, had her minor cuts and bruises attended by an SSR medic, and was given a soft robe, pajamas, and slippers by her captors -- no, no, the SSR, she reminded herself. When they left her alone in a bedroom, she flicked the bedside lamp on and off a few times to remind herself that if she wanted darkness, she could have it. However, the lamp was bolted to the metal bedside table, with its bulb encased in a cage to prevent tampering; she couldn't escape reminders that she was still in a prison, even if it was a benign one.

She sat for a little while on the edge of the bed until she felt that she was in full control of herself, and then she went in search of Daniel and Jack.

The West Coast SSR's containment facility was a suite of rooms with a central bathroom, several bedrooms, and a lounge. It wasn't used for prisoners of the usual type, but rather for people of "uncertain status": those who were manifesting powers or abilities they couldn't control (a rare occurrence, but one that had to be planned for), defecting Leviathan agents, potentially compromised agents like themselves, and anyone else who needed to be kept in comfortable surroundings without being allowed to roam free. Every room contained cameras and audio recording equipment, and the lounge had a one-way mirror on one wall with a metal cage over it to prevent breaking.

Peggy had helped design it herself. Now, as she passed through the lounge, she had to force herself not to glance at the one-way mirror, or to dwell too heavily on the bolted-down furniture. (It was _comfortable_ furniture, at least. This she'd made sure of, and she was now glad.)

There were two small bedrooms opening off a short hallway on each side of the lounge, with the door to the bathroom opening off the lounge itself. Since no one was in the other bedroom on her side of the lounge, the men must be on the other side. It was an understandable decision on the part of Agent (presently acting Chief) Walker; it would be completely improper for Daniel to be housed adjacent to her.

She still found it deeply annoying, but managed not to actually say so.

In the other hallway, she found one door closed and the other standing half open. Peggy peeked cautiously inside. It was a mirror image of her room, combining elements of "hospital", "prison", and "mental asylum." There was a bolted-down single bed, a table beside it, a closet, a lamp.

Jack was in the bed, or rather lying on it, dressed in the same filthy clothes that he must have been wearing in the Leviathan facility, though someone had bandaged his injuries. He was still and silent, his head turned away from her so she couldn't see his face, just a head of tousled blond hair. Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, good leg braced against the floor, not looking at much of anything except the wall. He glanced up when she peeked in the door, and offered her a small smile, a tug at the corner of his bruised mouth. "He's been in and out," he said, answering the question before she asked it. "Mostly out, so far."

Daniel looked somehow more vulnerable like this than he had in the Leviathan facility. Like her, he'd washed and had his injuries tended to; there was a fresh white bandage over the gash on the side of his face. The right leg of his pajamas was pinned up over the stump of his missing leg, and the loose sleeves of the top fell around his hands. A pair of crutches leaned against the wall.

Peggy crossed the room and sat down carefully beside him. His hair was damp, and he smelled of antiseptic and soap. He gave a soft grunt when she started to lean against him, and she pulled back, not wanting to hurt him. The edge of a bandage peeked out from under the sleeve of his pajama top.

She still wasn't entirely sure if she'd killed two men whilst escaping her room, but she felt no remorse over it, not right now; in fact, she'd gladly go back and kill them again for what they'd done. She wanted to take Daniel in her arms and kiss him and never let go, but it seemed oddly -- _disloyal_ was the incongruous thought that came into her head, to do it here with Jack right there on the bed. Let alone with the SSR watching. 

Daniel gave her a wry smile. "I want to apologize in advance for anything I might say in the next couple of hours." 

"I don't think anything you might say would be offensive to me."

"You might be surprised. You haven't heard me babbling." He grimaced. "I think it's starting to wear off now, but I've been flying high on some kind of interrogation drugs. Lab boys told me what it's called, but I don't remember."

"As am I." He probably felt a lot like she did: hazy, out of it, the whole world suffused with a sense of unreality. Her head was starting to hurt, which she hoped meant that it was, as Daniel said, wearing off -- the drug high replaced by a hangover.

"How _are_ you, anyway?" she asked.

"I'll be okay." Another small smile. "I've been worse."

"And how is he?" she asked softly, looking down at Jack. Like Daniel's, his face was bruised and swollen -- and burned, she saw, right at the base of his ear. Like the burn from an electrode laid against the skin.

 _Those bastards._ Was Daniel hiding burns too, under the loose white sleeves of his pajamas? She hadn't looked too closely at him in the Leviathan basement.

"Still out," Daniel said softly. "They gave us both a lot of ... well ... drugs, and whatever. Almost wish I --"

Whatever he wished was left unsaid when Jack gave a sudden, violent flinch and woke with a start. He flung out his hands and Daniel lunged forward with speed that startled Peggy -- only to realize a moment later, as Daniel pinned Jack's wrists under his hands to stop him from flinging himself out of bed, that Jack _didn't know_ they'd escaped. His eyes were wide open, mindless with panic, and Peggy remembered how hard she'd tried in her room by herself to retain her awareness of the here and now (how hard she was still fighting, really, even though being here, with Daniel's familiar smell to remind her, helped somewhat).

"Hey," Daniel said, and there was a softness in his tone that surprised her -- something new, a shift in the balance between the three of them. "We're out. You hear me? We're out."

Peggy reached out without thinking about it and put her hand on Jack's arm, just above Daniel's. She was always a little careful with Jack, though not so much when Daniel was around as when he wasn't; she had long since come to terms with how easily what she felt for Jack, whatever it _was_ that she felt for him, could easily fall into ... well ... something it couldn't be; she was a woman in a relationship, and that came with certain responsibilities. But there was no hesitation now, and she also sensed something in Daniel, something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it was different and with her nerves jangling in the grip of unfamiliar pharmaceuticals, she didn't know how to feel about that. 

"Jack?" Daniel said, when no answer came.

Peggy squeezed Jack's arm, supportive in the only way she knew how to be. The only way she dared to be.

Jack blinked at the ceiling and then focused slowly on the two of them. His eyes were dilated, and Peggy thought maybe it wasn't just exhaustion and stress that made the lights seem too bright to her. 

"We're out," he whispered, repeating Daniel's words, and ran his tongue across dry, cracked lips.

"Out," Daniel repeated firmly. 

Jack sat up, still somewhat shaky but visibly trying to pull himself together. All his movements were very slow and careful, like a drunk man trying to pretend he was sober.

"We're in the quarantine suite, right?" he said slowly, eyes tracking around the room, resting on the camera in the corner. Daniel nodded.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing elsewhere in the suite. Peggy sprang to her feet, her nerves vibrating like a live wire, and she saw Jack flinch, one hand moving toward a gun that wasn't there.

"They said they were gonna bring us food," Daniel said. His hand was still hooked loosely around Jack's wrist, Peggy couldn't help noticing.

"Not really hungry," Jack said.

Peggy could relate. She knew she _should_ be; they'd been in there for two days, unfed for nearly the entire time. And yet her stomach was a knotted ball, tied up with the aftereffects of the drugs and whatever else, she didn't know.

But. They needed to eat.

Emboldened by Daniel's example, she brushed Jack's wrist with her fingertips, and then pulled her hand back when she recalled that nothing they did here was unobserved. The soft click of a door closing in the outer room let her know they were alone again -- alone but for the cameras, at least. 

"You can change," she said gently. "There are clean things in the closet." 

Jack nodded slowly, and Peggy turned away from the bed; Daniel got up a moment later, reaching for the crutches. His hand trailed off Jack's arm, Jack's hand falling to the bed only as distance separated them, and Peggy knew then that it wasn't her imagination: something had changed between the two of them while they were trapped together in that Leviathan hell hole. 

It wasn't only a positive change. There seemed to be an instinctive trust between them that had never existed before, but there was also something nervous and awkward. They reached for each other and yet couldn't meet each other's eyes.

Well, she had learnt for herself, with Jack, how a relationship could turn on a few shared moments of danger and intimacy. Daniel and Jack had gone through something very different from what she and Jack had shared in Russia, and the shared intimacies had been different (shared indignities was more like it, she thought; she hadn't been unacquainted with torture during the war, and few other things could strip a human being down to their bare and humiliating essence -- she could only imagine that the two of them had had more than their share of that sort of intimacy now). But it had wrought changes on them anyway, and as she and Daniel left the room, she found herself unexpectedly uncertain about how to proceed. If it had only been the two of them, she'd have taken him back to her room and wrapped her arms around him, and let him choose how to proceed from there. But now ... now, with Jack an added complication, and with SSR watchers observing them ... she didn't know what was right.

There was food on the coffee table, a tray containing bread and bowls of soup and cups of coffee. Daniel sat on the sofa, nibbling on a piece of bread, while Peggy opened a cabinet to see what, if anything, had been left for them to entertain themselves. There wasn't much: a few paperbacks, a deck of cards.

She might need to reconsider certain aspects of the design of the quarantine rooms once she was no longer contained in them. 

Jack crossed across the back of the room, not looking at them, with a bundle of clothing in his arms. He vanished into the bathroom. This was followed by the sound of running water.

"Peggy," Daniel said quietly. "Sit down."

She hadn't noticed she was still moving around, opening drawers and peeking inside, picking things up and putting them down. The damned drugs, these bloody white walls ...

"Peggy," Daniel said again. "C'mere."

The running water had ceased in the bathroom, and now there were soft splashing sounds: Jack taking a bath. Peggy thought of the water flowing over his body, soothing his bruises and worse things he didn't want to talk about ...

 _Jack's worse than I am,_ Daniel had said.

"Hey. Peggy. ... Peg."

She came to him finally, sat beside him on the sofa and did the thing she'd wanted to do most of all: put her arms around him, as gently as she could, and felt him relax into her -- finally, _finally_ taking the comfort she wanted to offer. She kissed the corner of his mouth, and he turned his face against hers. Daniel might have been holding back for Jack's sake too, she thought, and didn't know how to take that.

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" she asked quietly, her lips brushing his.

He didn't answer, and when Peggy raised her head, Daniel flicked his eyes at the camera in the corner.

Ah. Yes. Right.

So nothing was said; they stayed on the sofa, arms wrapped around each other, leaning into each other, until the bathroom door opened. There was a moment's silence -- Peggy could all but feel Jack pause -- and looked up to see him standing in the bathroom door, hair dark and wet. He'd made some effort to put himself together, his hair smoothed down, but he was wearing the same beige SSR pajamas as she and Daniel were, and his feet were bare; it was very odd, seeing him like that. There was something unfocused about him right now, something scared and young.

"Hey, Jack," Daniel said, and Jack gave him a slight smile that seemed to break the tension somewhat.

"Come here," she said. "Have something to eat."

Jack glanced wryly at the tray, untouched but for half a piece of bread that Daniel had halfheartedly eaten. His sardonic expression made him look a little more like himself.

Peggy narrowed her eyes at him, detached herself from Daniel, and picked up a bowl of soup to set a good example. 

As it turned out, she was hungrier than she'd thought, and managed to eat half a bowl of soup before her stomach decided it was done. By that point Jack had downed half a bowl of his own -- sitting across from them, near and yet worlds away, all of them acutely conscious of the cameras. Daniel finally ate a little too. The drugs, Peggy thought, _were_ finally wearing off. She was tired and her head hurt abominably.

Jack picked at the leg of his pajamas, but let go as soon as he noticed her looking. "So what's your quarantine protocol here? It's two days at the New York SSR."

"Same for us," Daniel said. "Which seemed hardly long enough when we were coming up with the guidelines, and _way_ to long now that I'm actually in it."

"I found a deck of cards in one of the cabinets," Peggy said.

"Hooray," Jack remarked dryly. "Ana taught me twenty different kinds of solitaire after I got shot. Hope I still remember all of 'em."

"I'm thinking when we're out of here, having more ways for prisoners to occupy themselves is going on the list," Daniel said. "I mean, if nothing else, bored prisoners are a problem waiting to happen."

They were both sounding more like themselves, which was good, but there was still a brittle sense of fake normalcy over all of it. Peggy's twitchy urge to move was wearing off, but now that her brain was working more efficiently, she was starting to feel even more bothered by the cameras. It was like a tickle on the back of her neck. Involved in the design of the place as she'd been, Peggy now realized that she hadn't anticipated the psychological effect of knowing that one's every move was being watched.

Thinking about that, she jumped to her feet.

"Peggy?" Daniel said, looking up quickly from his half-empty soup bowl.

The larger pieces of furniture were bolted down, but the chairs weren't. Peggy picked one up, to the clear alarm of both of the men. 

"Peggy," Jack said, "we're all a little stir-crazy here, but if you could maybe save the jailbreak 'til the _second_ day ..."

Peggy rolled her eyes and carried the chair into her bedroom. She set the chair in the corner under the camera, and climbed up so she could reach it. Her movements were smooth and automatic, honed by a dozen missions, as she carefully disconnected its wires.

"Should we stop her?" Daniel said from the doorway, sounding amused. Peggy looked over her shoulder and saw them both there, watching her.

"I don't know, do _you_ want to get in her way right now?"

"Point."

"The least you two could do is help me," Peggy said. 

Some distant outside-observer part of herself was mildly scandalized at her own behavior. She knew why the quarantine protocols were in place. But right now it seemed so cruelly intrusive, when they'd all three been held and abused and forced to give up confidences, to imprison them once again under the camera's staring eye.

She knew the location of all the bugs in the room, so she began prying them out of their hiding places in the bedframe, the trim along the walls, and the light fixture. Daniel sighed deeply and then started getting the ones around the doorframe. Jack, who hadn't been involved in putting the place together and therefore didn't know where any of the bugs were, stood back for a couple of minutes, and then disappeared and came back with an empty water glass and collected the bugs as Peggy and Daniel found them.

When her room was cleared, Peggy picked up the chair and carried it over to Jack's room, pausing along the way for a cheery wave to the viewers behind the one-way mirror.

"Peggy," Jack said, as he and Daniel trailed behind, "you're a terrible influence."

"I don't notice either of you trying to stop me."

They were working on debugging Jack's room when Peggy heard the not-entirely-unexpected sound of the door opening into the suite's lounge.

"Chiefs -- Agent Carter --" their guard began anxiously. He had his gun out, but it was pointed at the floor rather than at her. He looked young and uncertain. She had to think to remember his name -- Mendez, it was Mendez. "Is everything, er ... all right in here?"

"It's fine, man, carry on," Jack said in the cheery, cavalier way he had when everything was not fine at all. Peggy glared at him.

"It's all right, Agent," Daniel said. "It's only the bedrooms. We can't walk out of these rooms into the main lounge without being observed."

"Yes, but ..."

"I know it's not protocol." Peggy smiled at him. "We would simply appreciate a little privacy." 

To his credit, he didn't point out that this was what the entire quarantine suite was designed to prevent, although she could see that he was thinking about it. "I'll have to tell Acting Chief Walker."

"Good man," Daniel told him. "Do that. Thanks."

"Uh ... yes, sirs, ma'am ..." He left in some haste.

"I was expecting you to jump him before he made his getaway," Jack remarked, rattling the water glass of bugs in his hand. "How much trouble _do_ you plan to get us into, Peggy?"

"I haven't any idea what you're talking about."

"Aren't you breaking out of here?"

Peggy looked back and forth between them. "Did you two really think that?"

"Well ..." Daniel said. Jack shrugged.

"Good heavens. No." She squared her shoulders and grabbed the chair. "Come, we still need to do Daniel's room."

"Oh, like there's any point of that," Jack said, covering the top of the glass with his palm. He eyed the two of them, then cut his eyes across the suite to where Peggy's room was.

"Don't be crude," Peggy said.

"Am I wrong?"

Peggy looked at Daniel, who shook his head and then shrugged.

For appearance's sake if nothing else, they went ahead and debugged Daniel's room. Peggy left the glass of bugs ( _quite_ dry and undamaged, thank you) on the coffee table in the lounge, and then went to pin up her hair properly in the bathroom.

When she came out, the lights had been lowered in the lounge, though not extinguished completely. Still, it was decent of them; apparently Acting Chief Walker had decided against making a big deal out of the debugging. The rest of the suite was quiet. She went to her own bedroom, opened the door, and hesitated. 

"Hi," Daniel said quietly.

The room was dark, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Peggy closed the door and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim stripe of light coming in from the lounge. Then she went to Daniel and half-sat, half-collapsed next to him, and very carefully buried her face in his neck.

He put his arms around her, and they stayed that way for a long while. Eventually Peggy whispered, "There will be talk if you spend the night in here."

"I know," he whispered back. "Does it bother you?"

"Yes," she admitted, honest in the dark. "But I'll get over it."

"Think you can sleep?"

"I don't know. Let's find out."

Daniel had already turned the blankets down. They curled up together, still dressed, but Peggy couldn't relax. The itchiness under her skin was back, a twitchy restlessness, and she could feel Daniel equally tense beside her. Finally he sighed and turned his head to face her on the shared pillow.

"We're not just going to leave him out there, are we?" Peggy said.

"No." Daniel's voice was a breath.

They got up without talking about it further. She wasn't sure if this gave them more or less plausible deniability, or if it would just fuel the SSR rumor mill for months to come. But she'd been the target of rumors before. She'd weathered it.

The door to Jack's room was closed, but when Daniel tapped on it, Jack said softly, "Yeah?"

Daniel cracked the door open. "Jack?"

The lights were off in here as well, but Jack wasn't sleeping, just sitting on the edge of the bed. He reached over and flicked on the lamp. He had that same stunned, lost look that Peggy had seen when he'd come out of the bathroom, but she saw his face change as the light came on, saw the facade go up, and he gave them a brief and insincere smile. "Can't sleep?" His voice was brittle.

"No," Daniel said simply. "You?"

Jack shook his head, not precisely an answer. "Do you mind if we come in?" Peggy asked.

"Oh, why not."

It was an answer that could have meant anything, but she sensed the sincerity under the flippancy. She hesitated with her hand on the door; Jack shrugged, and she closed it behind her, shutting out the cameras and the bugs, giving them a little slice of privacy.

"So what _are_ you two doing here?" Jack said. He wasn't looking at Daniel, or at her either, for that matter, though she got the feeling he was actively avoiding Daniel's gaze.

"We couldn't sleep," she said. "I thought we established that."

"So you're going to sleep here?"

It came out sharp, and it was Daniel who said softly, "If you want us to."

Peggy looked at him, and at Jack, whose face was on the edge of some emotion that he didn't seem fully able to commit to, and she thought, _Oh._ She didn't intend to ask what had happened between them in the Leviathan base -- they deserved their secrets, just as she and Daniel had never talked about Belarus. But she thought she might have the shape of it now, just the edges.

And Jack moved over on the bed.

They didn't talk about it. None of them needed to. Daniel laid the crutches aside, and they found room, somehow, in the narrow confines of a bed meant for only one person. It wasn't comfortable. But somehow, though she'd been afraid of hurting Daniel earlier, having the three of them all tangled together was ... easier: a pile of people, hard to tell where one left off and another began. She could feel them both breathing against her, and that eased something in her chest that had been screwed into a knot of tension.

Jack leaned over to turn off the light. There was more rearranging and squirming in the dark, and Peggy thought they were probably all going to wake up even more stiff and sore than when they'd fallen asleep. But she felt she _could_ sleep now, as she hadn't before.

"Good night," she murmured, and decided she could blame the drugs if anyone laughed. But Jack said, "Night, Peggy," into her hair. Daniel just squeezed her hand, and she closed her eyes and turned her face into his neck.

It was the first time she'd felt safe since she'd gone into that Leviathan cell.


End file.
